Joe discusses the nature of citizen journalism and says the photo was a snapshot – a one-time thing. He believes there’s a distinction between the act of witnessing and journalism, which involves editing, curation, analysis and context. A journalist’s focus should be to help people understand what a story means and that requires a more in-depth perspective.

I wonder about how citizen journalism is changing the nature of the scoop. Maybe that’s beyond a journalist’s domain and they need to rely on crowdsourcing breaking news from people who are there in real-time.

In our paid, earned, shared and owned landscape, PR people have to be resourceful about finding new ways to get their stories out there and engaging influencers.

Gini says her team approaches earned media from three angles and that includes citizen journalists. They target smaller, mid-level and influential publications and tailor the story so it resonates with each.

Final word from Joe: Look for the person who has something to say, covers a subject on a consistent basis and moves on to being a contributor to larger and more influential sources. Build relationships early and never ignore an individual if they’re intelligent, credible, trustworthy and can stick to it.

Twitter is slowly rolling out a “buy now” button to users, which promotes the ability to buy directly from the social network.

As Twitter continues to try to figure out how to make money, and brands want to figure out a return-on-investment that translates directly to the bottom line, it will be interesting to watch and see how (or if?) this works.

Pinterest certainly has been able to figure it out…maybe Twitter is taking a page from their book.

We discuss the implications and pros and cons of social advertising and then move to Apple Pay.

Apple Pay is offered on the new iPhone 6 and provides a way for you to pay without cash or credit card (and is my dream because I hate carrying a wallet and I hate carrying a purse).

We debate the merits, whether it’s bad for small business, whether it could be disastrous for some, and whether it’s made only for enterprise organizations.

Martin tells a story of his local coffee shop—Snakes and Lattes—that is a true neighborhood destination. He worries a business like that won’t be able to afford the infrastructure needed to accept Apple Pay. I, however, share a story of how local boutiques in my neighborhood all have iPads at the counter to accept Belly, a local loyalty card.

Who is right and who is wrong is yet to be seen, but we’d love to hear what you think.

Will the Twitter “buy now” button help brands increase sales? Will Apple Pay be devastating to small business?

This week, the gang’s together again…and we start by talking about a business that charges customers a penalty for negative online reviews.

Whaa?

In case you missed it, a hotel in upstate New York said it would levy a fine of $500 for bad reviews written by guests.

The company has since recanted the story claiming it was a joke that harkened back to a long-past wedding and they never removed the policy. Gini likens this to businesses that pay for positive reviews and says you can’t dictate what people say about you online good or bad. You just have to provide the best experience and customer service you can, listen and address issues. Here’s a link to the story for details.

We switch gears and discuss a study on online privacy by Craig Newmark and others that offers some insightful results. One of the main findings is that two-thirds of us either skim or don’t bother to read the terms of service. Which means we don’t know what we’re agreeing to or what rights we’re signing away.

Gini, Joe and I did a straw poll and it turns out the three of us all fall in that 66 per cent majority.

That’s not a good thing…

Joe links this to news that when Google receives a request under Europe’s right to be forgotten legislation, it has been informing webmasters about it before it takes down the links-in-question.

According to the WSJ, Google claims that alerting publishers to impending removals is the only way they can respond with their side of the story.

Joe’s concern is that we’re giving a private company the ability to make decisions about our privacy and rights based on its commercial self-interests.

I think the situation is similar to one we’ve always had with media: they have their own agendas, yet we trust them to filter stories and news.

It’s certainly a complex issue.

What do you think? About penalizing or paying for reviews? About reading terms of service, about the right to be forgotten…

When we recorded this show, I’d just returned from SXSWi and I offer my thoughts reflections on this year’s Festival.

There’s no doubt SXSW remains a one-of-a-kind event with a unique laid-back energy and excitement for all things tech and social. That’s something you see first-hand watching the featured speakers and keynotes and in many of the smaller sessions, too.

And while there weren’t any big new platform launches in 2014, there was a lot of big thinking.

SXSW is still a defining event. Yet with so many people and ideas in one place it can seem a bit overwhelming. Before you go, do your homework and figure out what you want to see and do and who you want to meet; the Festival offers such a friendly, open vibe, you can meet anyone.

And if you’re looking for a more intimate conference with the South-by feel, check out the second annual SXSW V2V in Las Vegas that happens in July.

After receiving a pitch, Gini asked Laura Petrolino to test out the product and Laura wrote about it on SpinSucks. Essentially PressFriendly helps automate media relations. It’s aimed at startup entrepreneurs who are frustrated with the PR experience and want to try it on their own.

Gini feels they have the right thinking but that it’s difficult to automate relationship-building. She also wonders if reaching out to media and bloggers is the best use of an entrepreneur’s time or if they’d be better off hiring a professional.

Joe’s not sure building a media list should be handed to the most junior person or to an algorithm. That can lead to spammy pitches that hurt the reputation of the entire industry.

Finally, I mention that one of the students in my UTSCS hybrid Foundations Course produced a video, Joey Loves Water, and it went viral. It was part of her class assignment and as of this writing, she has nearly 200,000 views.

Joe notices the video has been picked up on a lot of cat sites as well as on Huffington Post. Once it got on the circuit, he observes, you can almost trace its virality by seeing which sites help amplify and pass it along.

The lesson? Ditch the corporate spokesperson and bring in a cat. Or…maybe not.

Martin Waxman is back and we are grateful because he is much better at the intro and closing than Joe Thornley and me.

We kick the show off by talking about the Kelly Blazek crisis situation that happened a couple of weeks ago.

As a quick refresher (or the story, for those of you who missed it), the 2013 Cleveland Communicator of the Year received an email from a young professional who is moving to Ohio and searching for a job.

Because Blazek runs the 7,300 member marketing job board for the Cleveland area, this young woman sent her a LinkedIn message, explaining who she was, her business expertise, and what kinds of jobs she could do. She then asked to join the jobs board.

What she received from Blazek, in return, was both unprofessional and … strange … for a communicator.

While we don’t beat this horse to death, it did create an interesting conversation about LinkedIn and how we each use the tool.

As it turns out, we have three different uses for it: Ambivalence, referrals, and contact management, which makes it an interesting look at how there really is no right way or wrong way to use social media. Except to not take your bad day out on someone asking or help.

Martin also mentions he hates the generic LinkedIn requests. You know the one. The, “I’d like to add you to my professional network” with no mention on how you know the person or why you’d like to connect.

He also talks about his pet peeve, which is people who have never worked with you asking you to write a recommendation.

After you listen, we leave the floor to you. What are your personal rules about LinkedIn connections?

P.S. While Terry Fallis’s new book, No Relation, doesn’t come out until May, as is his modus operandi, he is podcasting it for you ahead of time. Check it out!

So you’ve made a video. And you’re disappointed that it just sits there, with few viewers and little discussion. Why do so many videos made by companies and organizations fall flat? In many cases, its because they lack an essential component of effective storytelling – conflict.

Think of any story you love and you’re sure to find conflict at its core. That’s what Mike Edgell, the Video Creative Director at 76BrandFilms, tells Martin Waxman and me in this week’s episode of Inside PR.

What are the essentials of storytelling? A hook, context, conflict, build, and resolution. Omit any of these and the viewer is lost, the narrative falls flat. Of these, the essential component, the one that drives the story, is conflict. And this can be a problem for brands who hear the word conflict and immediately run the other way. Who take a black and white view of conflict.

In fact, conflict arises in virtually every situation and with a nuanced approach, it can be built into virtually every video story. So, how does a brand do this? Mike has some tips.

1) Find a conflict that the organization can overcome. An internal challenge can ring true and does not run the risk of pitting the organization against outside forces.

2) Have empathy. Be sure that the conflict relates to the interests of your target audience. Don’t start with what the organization wants to talk about. Start with what the audience fears, wants and cares about. If tell your story with the audience in mind, your content stands a higher chance of resonating with them.

3) Finally, make sure your conflict has some significant risk. There has to be a consequence to failure. Otherwise, why should a viewer care about the story? This risk can embrace both the loss of something and the continuing absence of something desirable. In both instances, tension can be built up and the situation resolved, providing the audience with a satisfying experience.

Simple rules often overlooked.

Listen to the full podcast as Mike develops these ideas and illustrates them with real life examples of videos that met the challenge of incorporating conflict to engage audiences.

Gini Dietrich fans, don’t despair. Gini couldn’t make this week’s recording, but she will return next week.

This week, Gini Dietrich talks about what it was like to be in Europe when the news of the Boston marathon explosion reached her. The reality of knowing almost instantly about something combined with a sense of distance fed by different mainstream media news agendas and the sense of being out of sync that occurs in a different time zone.

How can we assign credibility to sources we encounter for the first time during a fast breaking news event? While mainstream media may occasionally lapse, can the application of professional journalistic practices be counted on to produce more reliable coverage in the whole?

Martin points to the recent AP Twitter hacking incident, which he says drives home the responsibility we all have to approach anything we hear or see with a degree of skepticism.

Joe likens this to moving around in a darkened room. We know we’ve had contact with something, but we can’t really see what it is. Judgment and speculation become overly close neighbors at times like these.

How do you assign authority and credibility in the era of instant news?

Inside PR 3.31: How are making your living in the world of integrated communications?[ 15:46 ]Download

We’re living in a period of profound change in communications channels and tools. How will you change your communications practices to reflect these underlying changes in the communications networks, expectations and participants? What are the opportunities? What are the challenges?

Gini says that the current set of changes are accelerating a move to agency consolidation that she has been observing since the turn of the century. But while we as professionals are finding ourselves in integrated agencies, we are feeling pressure to become expert in related fields – SEO, content marketing, paid promotion. We have to be able to operated above and across the silos as they break down.

Martin Waxman feels that the greatest challenge for PR practitioners is to break out of the publicist mode once and for all. The move to content journalism and content marketing plays to the PR practitioner’s traditional storytelling strengths. And if you’re looking at your career, don’t disregard this path to the future.

Joe points to the trend to anchor integrated communications in marketing departments and marketing programs, places and activities that measure real results against defined objectives. PR practitioners must become platform agnostic, married not solely to earned media, but open to paid media as well as owned media.

Gini notes that she has seen search firms competing for some of these assignments. The challenge for these firms is that they are great at writing for robots, not for human beings. The complete firm will write for both human beings and the search robots. The success of PR firms or any firm will rest on their ability to pull together in one team the analytic and storytelling skills to offer truly compelling, effective content marketing.

Finally, Martin asks how people will be able to make a living as content creators when online outlets like Huffington Post and Forbes.com pay nothing or very little for quality content. Joe suggests that most won’t. There are few Mathew Ingrams or Om Maliks, few people who have something to say, day in and day out. Most of us write more infrequently on a narrower range of topics. As it ever was, few will make a living directly from their content creation. Most of us will of necessity rely on earning our living in jobs in which we benefit from reputations enhanced by creating and publishing smart content.

Also in this episode, Martin gives a plug to the digital communications class at University of Toronto. The next course starts in May. So, if you’d interested in taking this, contact Martin.

This week, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley talk about new social management tool Jugnoo, tablet computers, Facebook timelines for pages and a new feature in social media measurement tool Sysomos.

Last week we reported that Jugnoo, a new social media management console service had launched in open beta. We received a comment from Danny Brown telling us we pronounced it wrong. Oops. And Gini and I talk about when a service like Jugnoo should ask potential users to install a plug in or open access to a user’s Website data.

We also talk about the rapid adoption of tablets in the workplace. Two years ago, we considered our notebook computers to be the go-to mobile devices. Today, we each use a tablet computer. We wonder how long it will be before we will be able to reduce the number of devices. The limiting factor on this is the evolution of tablets to include both the hardware and software to support all the content creation we want to do.

Timelines for pages is being rolled out to all users at the end of the month. Gini is keen on timelines. She’s watched as content that she had long ago posted to the Arment Dietrich page had resurfaced. Old content becomes more accessible. Joe is skeptical of the value of timelines for small businesses. Many small businesses have limited resources to devote to social media. And it seems to him that corporate page owners will have to devote considerable energy and resources to keep their content fresh. And this may not be a priority for may businesses.

Finally, we talk about the integration of Google Analytics into Sysomos’ Heartbeat social media monitoring service. A nice addition that makes a good service better.

What do you think? Are we on the right track? Missing something? Do you have a different view?

We interviewed him at the PRSA International Conference in Orlando last month and thought now was a great time to run it.

It’s 2012 planning time so we discuss with him the things people ought to remember when using the social tools, trends to watch, and what to consider for next year.

A few things you want to pay particular attention to while you listen:

– His keynote topic at the conference was the goal of corporate culture in speed, authenticity, and response, not about social media.
– He talks about how social media success isn’t about the tools and technology. It’s about corporate culture and being social instead of doing social.
– He wants you to remember that the tools always change. If you focus on the tools, when they die, go public, or get bought out, you’re going to be left with the smoking wreckage of a plan not focused on strategy.
– He says the goal is not to be good at social media. The goal is to be good at business, using social media.

We ask him what are the three things he wants you to take away and he outlines them for us.

We also discuss how, as consumers we have so much more information about at our fingertips, it’s important for companies to be sustainable, human, approachable, and engage to help us make our decisions.

Ending with what’s next for Jay Baer and the four words Martin takes away every time he hears Jay speak.

It’s been said multiple times during the podcast, but if you’ve never heard Jay speak, you’ll quickly understand why he’s one of the industry’s most sought-after experts.